My book reviews for The Rotstorm Trilogy by Ian Green including The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath, The Gauntlet and the Burning Blade, and The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain. Please be aware that the reviews for the second and third books contain spoilers.

For 312 years the rotstorm has blighted the ruins of the Ferron Empire.

Born of an unholy war between gods themselves, it scours the land with acid mists and deadly lightning, spawning twisted monstrosities from its nightmarish depths.

On the Stormwall, the men and women of the Stormguard maintain their vigil - eyes sharp, blade sharper - defending the Undal Protectorate from the worst of the rotstorm's corruption.

But behind the stormfront, something is stirring, kindling the embers of an ancient conflict and a plan to kill a god.

Will Stormguard steel be enough to meet the coming tempest?

***

Sergeant Floré Artollen patrols the wind-gnarled pines of Hookstone Forest for the Watch. But it wasn't always so.

She spent years on the wall with the Stormguard, face to face with the bloodshed and horror of the rotstorm.

With the storm now far beyond her western horizon, here she has a new life, a home, a husband and a daughter.

But when roving lights descend from night skies, bright orbs of silver fire in the night, Floré's village is devastated, her husband mortally wounded and her daughter abducted.

To get her back, Floré will have to take up her longsword and silvered dagger, don the guard's heavy metal plate gauntlets and step back into the storm.

This book was provided for free by the Publisher and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

Please note
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When Head of Zeus asked if anyone was interested in a debut fantasy book by a Scottish author, my virtual hand was immediately in the air. I can’t quite remember how Lauren Tavella at Head of Zeus phrased her shout-out tweet, but there was something in it that spoke to me. When she replied to tell me more about The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath, my interest in the book just grew even more.

I have to apologise to Head of Zeus and the blog tour members before me because I have been completely remiss in promoting The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath blog tour. So far, my August has been one migraine after another, and The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath provided some wonderful moments of solace and distraction while Scotland’s weather decided to have what felt like a rotstorm of its own. It was very atmospheric, but complete hell on my head. Please do take some time to visit the lovely stops before and after me <3

The thing that stuck with me after finishing The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath is that this is very much a fantasy epic that is about real people. Yes, some people can use magic, there are gods, fantastical creatures, and knights who fight the forces of darkness; everything you expect in a fantasy novel. But they’re not put on a pedestal; they’re not out of reach to the reader or out of touch with reality. The protagonist, Floré, could easily be transported from the fantasy setting of The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath to a contemporary setting. She’s a retired warrior who has moved to the suburbs to make a life with her husband, and they’ve started a family together. Instead of fighting on the front lines of the ongoing war with the Ferron, Floré now helps keep her village and local area safe, training the new cadets to do what she once did. 

It’s no less important a role than the one that made her a figure of legend, and it’s one Floré takes seriously. She doesn’t talk about her life before arriving in the village, about what she did to be awarded the silk cord of valour on her sword that marks her as a hero of the highest esteem in the Undal Protectorate. It’s in these actions that Green captures the reality of war and the trauma that is left behind once the fighting stops. The problem is that the fighting didn’t stop; it’s ongoing, eternal, and we learn that Floré only escaped it because she was given a special assignment.

When her daughter is taken by the enemy she once fought, Floré does the only thing she knows how; she fights. That is where the name of the book comes from: Floré is the Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath. The army of the Undal Protectorate is called the Stormwatch. It protects its people and ensures that the Protectorate will never again be enslaved. Within its ranks are the City Watch, the Forest Watch, the Lancers, the Commandos and Skein-Mages. The first two protect the people within the cities and villages of the Protectorate, the Lancers man the Stormwall, protect borders and hunt bandits and slavers. The Commandos are the ones who go into the rotstorms, the violent, magical storms that bring forth twisted monsters from the earth.

Floré is a Commando, and within the Commandos, there appear to be two specialisations that Commandos can follow if they wish: the art of the balanced blade or the gauntlet. Through interludes, Green gives us glimpses of Floré’s training alongside her old friends, including one who specialised in the art of the balanced blade. Floré also shows decent skill with a sword and a knife, suggesting that while a Commando specialises and prefers hand-to-hand combat or the blade, they can learn from either one. Another character explains to the cadets that “a Stormguard Commando keeps their gauntlets, so they can keep their fists beneath. And they need to keep their fists to swing their swords!”. I liked the almost symbiotic relationship that is described here, that a Commando’s Gauntlets are not just a piece of armour to protect them; they’re an essential part of their being. Without their gauntlets, they can’t do what they need to do, and throughout the book, Floré is often seen removing everything but her Gauntlets as though they are truly a piece of her. Only in moments when she truly feels safe does she take them off and lay them down, and it’s such a symbolic gesture. It’s like you know you can take a breath as a reader because Floré’s taken her gauntlets off, it’s ok, nothing is going to happen for the moment.

The Skien-Mages are one of the most interesting magic users I’ve seen in fantasy, especially as magic is not referred to as magic at all in The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath. It’s called the skien, and it’s all about the patterns within things, which reminds me more of atoms and DNA than it does magic, although to be clear, it is not described scientifically at all. That is just my personal perspective. In this novel, mages learn how to read patterns in the world and influence them. Some become whitestaffs who only read the patterns, and some become skien-mages who use their abilities to influence them. Using the skien is not unforgiving, though; it takes from the skien-mage. Someone who has great power and can use the skien by taking from the world around them rather than it taking from them is known as a Skien-Wreck. There are only a handful of those to have ever existed, and they have changed the world.

As I mentioned at the start of this review, this is an epic fantasy with everyday people, and what I liked about Green’s storytelling was that he tells an epic story without getting bogged down with endless details we don’t need to know. Before I started reading, I saw a review that said the lore didn’t make sense, and I was like, Oh no, here we go again. Then I read The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath and found it to be the total opposite of confusing. The book is not just interlaced with interludes that show us the backstory of the characters; there are also snippets of lore at the start of each chapter. This isn’t a new technique; it has been used in fantasy for as long as I can remember. The problem I find is that too many authors get lost in the story of their own lore. They weave this majestic story of gods and heroes and forget to ground it in the reality of their story. They throw names and locations at the reader and expect them to match these obscure references to things happening in the book, and most of the time, they don’t make any sense!

But Green doesn’t do that. Everything links back to something else, and what I loved about his snippets was that they weren’t fake, mysterious history books, ancient mystical texts of prophecy, or goddess forbid, poetry; they were real reports that would occur in a situation. Better yet, they were people that had been mentioned by characters in the book and like all of Green’s characters, they were normal people. They weren’t some grand duke or high priest, so and so. No, it was a Commander or a whitestaff. It also wasn’t just any Commander; it was the private diary of Floré’s former Commander, which meant the reader was getting the inside scoop and all the dirty details about the characters. That is something I’d much rather be reading than some dusty old relic of a tome spouting some nonsense prophecy that is barely relevant!

At the end of the day, The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath is a story of people handling situations as best as they can with the information they have, and as with most situations, that usually isn’t the entire story. There’s always more than one side to a story, and in war, it doesn’t always matter that the other side exists, and I think Green does an excellent job of showing that. Just like the realness of his characters, he hammers home the harsh realities of war and how important it is to survive, to just keep going, because if you stop, you’ll fall apart. We see this through the eyes of the multiple characters throughout the novel, and even though they are on different sides or have different amounts of experience with this type of trauma, they all share the same pain, the same struggles. Some experiences are universal; they touch everyone, but how we react to them is what separates us, and that is what is at the core of The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath.

As I got to about 70% of The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath, I began to think “this can’t be a standalone novel” and at the end of the epilogue, my suspicions were confirmed; “The End of Book One”. My interest in the story and characters grew as the story progressed. I didn’t immediately fall in love with this book; however, as things moved forward, I definitely became engaged in it. I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to see Floré and her group succeed in getting her daughter back. That, to me, is a sign of a good book. I will definitely be back for more in book two because I have to see what happens next, and I fell in love with the characters.

It didn’t occur to me until I sat down to write this review that other than a certain character (you’ll know who I mean when you meet them), none of them are the sexy heroines or strapping heroes you normally see in fantasy novels. It’s brilliant, and it’s so subtly done that you don’t even notice it because Green doesn’t make a big deal about it. I think that is the brilliance of his writing; everything that is usually emphasised in fantasy he understates, and he gets away with it because the reader already knows what to look for in a fantasy novel. So if you’re someone who’s read a bunch of fantasy and wants to read something a bit different, then The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath is for you. The story and world in this novel are very self-contained, however, so if you’re looking for a grand adventure like the lads of The Fellowship of the Rings had, then this isn’t going to be one for you.

For 312 years the rotstorm has blighted the ruins of the Ferron Empire.

Born of an unholy war between gods themselves, it scours the land with acid mists and deadly lightning, spawning twisted monstrosities from its nightmarish depths.

On the Stormwall, the men and women of the Stormguard maintain their vigil - eyes sharp, blades sharper - defending the Undal Protectorate from the worst of the rotstorm's corruption.

But behind the stormfront, something is stirring, kindling the embers of an ancient conflict and a plan to kill a god.

Will Stormguard steel be enough to meet the coming tempest?

***

As the children of the storm carve a bloody swathe across the Northern Marches, the whitestaffs - the Protectorate's healers and sages - have fled, retreating to their island citadel of Riven.

Their withdrawal has weakened the realm, and worse, their absence is a death sentence for Floré's daughter Marta. Skein-sick, Marta wastes away from the terrible magic she has inherited from her father and only the whitestaffs have the knowledge that might save her.

When Flore is dispatched to reason with the whitestaffs, to bring them back into the fold, she seizes the chance. Her mission could save both the protectorate and her child. But on the island of Iskander, caged and chained, she will only discover the worst betrayal.

This book was provided for free by the Publisher and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

As with any second book, it’s the same characters, yet everything is different. Floré and her companions survived their first run-in with the enemy, an unknown enemy that appeared in the night in flying orbs surrounded by silence, bringing fire and death. Many were lost, including family and friends. They aren’t the same people who left the small town of Hasselberry.

The battle-hardened Floré has seen even more battle, lost her husband, the skein-wreck Janos and chased the enemy, the rust-folk, across the land to retrieve her daughter from their clutches. Yselda was forced to quickly overcome the fears left to her when wolves murdered her family, leaving her the sole survivor, and the loss of her loved ones all over again when the orbs attacked. Cuss faced the loss of his brother Petron, who was taken by the rust-folk in the attacks and bravely sacrificed himself to save a fellow child prisoner. Benazir lost a hand fighting the wyrm that attacked her Storm Castle, along with the people in her unit, including her lover.

Despite the dangers and difficulties they have faced, they now have each other. They’ve fought together, bled together, and they have a common enemy. And it’s personal. The problem is that their enemy is more powerful and is growing by the day. The skein-mages’ magic can only do so much. The powerful skein-wreck Janos is dead, and the only other skein-wreck is his daughter Marta, whose magic is attacking her own body. Things aren’t looking good for our heroes.

A desperate mission is launched, led by Benazir and Floré to find out what happened to the whitestaffs, the mystical order of healers and sages who were the support network of the Stormguard. They fled to their island citadel of Riven when strange orbs cut through the night and have not been heard of since. All attempts to contact the island have failed, and with multiple ships not returning, our heroes have no idea what they are heading into.

But are they the heroes of this story? While fighting the crow-man Varratim, Floré was told a devastating truth. Everyone knows that the rotstorm is the result of the god-bear Anshuka’s nightmares, an eternal punishment for the Ferron. What no one knew was that the rust-folk are children who have been caught in the rotstorm. It is a truth that leaves a mother like Floré reeling, and one that she shares with her companions in The Gauntlet and the Burning Blade. There’s a turning point in the novel where Floré has to reconcile her feelings with their reality; the fight between her people, the Undal Protectorate, and the rust-folk is in full swing. Right now, they have to concentrate on surviving and worry about fixing the problems of the past another day.

Floré also has to keep an eye on Tomas, the skein-mage that she left in the ruins of their crashed orb at the feet of the bear-god. She tried to save him, but was too injured to be able to lift the tree branch that was trapping him. With the offer of a knife, she chose to save her daughter and left him to die.  It was an understandable decision to make, but the problem is that Tomas didn’t die, and Floré is left watching and waiting to see if there will be consequences for her actions.

Like the previous book, this is a full-on battle for survival, and it doesn’t stop from start to finish. It also becomes evident that there is more going on than they realised, and what they thought was one enemy is much more complicated. Green excels in showing the complexity of the situation. It’s not as simple as giant orbs appearing and shooting fire down from the sky. The enemy can be a lot sinister, and I saw a lot of familiar undercurrents in the subplots to what is happening in society today.

One of the ways Green does this so well is that he narrates from multiple perspectives, as he did in the previous book. The reader doesn’t just get the perspective from the “good guys” side; it also gets the story from the opposite side. In this book, there’s also a third party whom we met in book one, and they play a much larger role in The Gauntlet and the Burning Blade. Their actions suddenly become a bit clearer, and it’s a huge OH F*** moment which has repercussions across the entire world. We’re no longer just in Undal, as Green shows us briefly the ramifications in one of the neighbouring lands, hinting that in book three, we’re going to see the wider world he’s created in The Rotstorm series.

This is a massive action-packed book with flashbacks to Floré, Janos and Benazir’s past, namely the infamous attack that made Janos the biggest enemy of the rust-folk when he destroyed their city. Knowing what we now know about the rust-folk being children changed by the rotstorm, they are particularly chilling recollections to recall, and it’s fitting that Green has included them here because you can imagine that the characters are going through those memories again. It’s things like this that weave a full picture of the characters and what’s going through their minds. It makes it feel real.

When the group do find the whitestaffs is worse than anyone could ever believe, and what has happened is something that no one will have seen coming. I’m not quite sure if I can forgive Green for what happens; however, as a result, there are some absolutely brilliant fight scenes. In the first book, we really didn’t get to see best friends Floré and Benazir fight together as a team, and in this one, the two ladies get extremely pissed off, which is bad news for the idiots in their way. It is glorious (more, please, Ian!).

The Gauntlet and the Burning Blade also has a stunning mage duel that is written so well, you can visualise every detail as you read. Sometimes I find that magic duels sound amazing on paper, but the writer hasn’t really thought about how well they translate when someone reads them. No, this one you can actually see happening as you read it, and you will be on the edge of your chair the entire time, guaranteed.

Green deals with a lot of serious topics and sprinkles them with classic Scottish humour to keep things from getting too depressing. A skein-mage falling in love with a tiny kitten, and Floré and Benazir’s A-class banter throughout. This is a must-read for any fantasy fan. Book one was good; The Gauntlet and the Burning Blade was explosive. I’m almost a little scared for what book three, The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain, is going to contain!

For 312 years the rotstorm has blighted the ruins of the Ferron Empire.

Born of an unholy war between gods themselves, it scours the land with acid mists and deadly lightning, spawning twisted monstrosities from its nightmarish depths.

On the Stormwall, the men and women of the Stormguard maintain their vigil - eyes sharp, blades sharper - defending the Undal Protectorate from the worst of the rotstorm's corruption.

But behind the stormfront, something is stirring, kindling the embers of an ancient conflict and a plan to kill a god.

Will Stormguard steel be enough to meet the coming tempest?

***

As the children of the storm carve a bloody swathe across the Northern Marches, the whitestaffs - the Protectorate's healers and sages - have fled, retreating to their island citadel of Riven.

Their withdrawal has weakened the realm, and worse, their absence is a death sentence for Floré's daughter Marta. Skein-sick, Marta wastes away from the terrible magic she has inherited from her father and only the whitestaffs have the knowledge that might save her.

When Flore is dispatched to reason with the whitestaffs, to bring them back into the fold, she seizes the chance. Her mission could save both the protectorate and her child. But on the island of Iskander, caged and chained, she will only discover the worst betrayal.

This book was provided for free by the Publisher and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain by Ian Green is the final book in a trilogy that has been gripping from start to finish. Green has created a world that is dark, hostile and bleak, where characters are constantly fighting to survive against difficult odds. Unlike other fantasy series, it’s believable, with realistic consequences for their actions.

It is those consequences that Floré and her companions face in The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain. In the previous book, Tomas’ decisions led to the legendary immortal mage Tullen One-Eye breaking the chains placed upon him by god-bear Anshuka. The first thing that Tullen did was to take out the only mage powerful enough to stop him: Floré’s husband, the salt mage, Janos. Believed to be dead, everyone (including this reader!) was shocked to find that Janos had not indeed died as previously believed and had been kept alive by a malicious organisation. His reunion with Floré was short-lived when he tried to stop the newly unchained Tullen in an extraordinary battle and instead lost his life.

Reeling from losing Janos for a second time, Floré has no time to grieve as she and her companions find their way back from the island they were abandoned on. Her daughter Marta is ill, dying from the powerful skein-magic inherited from her father. Once again, Floré’s duties are split. As a mother, she wants to find her daughter more than anything, but as Commander, she knows that if they don’t stop Tullen from getting his revenge and killing the god-bear Anshuka, then no one will ever be safe, including Marta. It’s a race against time as the group splits to accomplish the impossible: stop the man who cannot be killed.

Once again, Green has served up a thrilling no-holds-barred fight for survival. After the events of the previous book, it was clear going into The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain that anything could happen, and from the start of this trilogy, Green made it quite clear that there would be casualties. Despite the obvious dire circumstances, there is a lot more happening than just the final battle. As seen in the previous book, the chains that were holding Tullen captive were tied deeply with the entire world, and when they broke, they had repercussions felt deeply. In the main story and in interludes, Green explores these repercussions, while also exploring theological concepts about belief and gods.

The final battle was well written and, as I’ve come to expect from Green’s writing over the course of The Rotstorm trilogy, original while still grounded in epic fantasy conventions.  The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain is an epic conclusion to a trilogy that is a must-read for fantasy fans, especially those who like their fantasy dark and unique.

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